ICYMI: Sen. Cruz Exposes Obama Administration's Willful Blindness to Radical Islamic Terrorism

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, convened a hearing in which he exposed the Obama administration’s pattern of turning a blind eye to radical Islamic terrorism, a dangerous practice that is counterproductive to keeping our country safe. Watch the hearing in its entirety here. Read Sen. Cruz’s opening statement here. Media coverage of the hearing can be found below:

Fox News: Dr. Zuhdi Jasser Discusses Administration’s ‘Willful Negligence’ of Radical Islamic Terrorism with Greta Van Susteren
“We’re supposed to somehow predict ‘violent extremism,’ and what I testified about was, as a Muslim who loves my faith in this month of Ramadan, the reason I took time to come here and testify is there is actually nothing that demonizes us more than preventing reform from happening, preventing the reformists from acknowledging that we have a problem within the house of Islam,” Dr. Jasser said. “That’s not Islamophobic. That’s not bigoted. It’s actually tough love, and that’s what we need. And our government so far has been willfully negligent and blind and has actually been helping the regimes around the world that want to look at Islam as having a PR problem.” 

The Texas Tribune: Cruz Assails Obama Anew Over Terrorism Fight
As chairman of the Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cruz gaveled in an afternoon hearing that included a lineup of experts who both defended the administration's anti-terrorism tactics and harshly criticized the current counterterrorism strategies. Cruz repeatedly charged the administration was engaged in "Orwellian" internal censorship for fear of offending the Islamic community. “Does anyone notice a trend here?” asked the junior senator from Texas. “A consistent effort by this administration to scrub any reference to radical Islamic terrorism, to pretend that the threat does not exist ... the consequence of the willful blindness, of a policy that as a matter of administration policy refuses to acknowledge the threat, means over and over again this administration has allowed the threats to go forward.” 

The Washington Free Beacon: Obama Admin Refuses to Inform Congress of ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in U.S.
Top officials from the Justice Department and FBI declined to appear on Capitol Hill to answer questions from lawmakers about domestic terror attacks and an administration policy of scrubbing references to Islamic terrorism and similar terms from government materials, lawmakers said. The policy has thwarted attempts by federal authorities to stop an increasing series of terror attacks from taking place on United States soil, according to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on oversight. In the past year the Obama administration has twice ordered that mentions of the terror group ISIS and “Islamic terrorism” be purged “from highly significant public records,” Cruz said. 

Houston Chronicle: Cruz Clashes with Democrats Over Obama and ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism’
Stymied by the Obama administration, which declined to make two top Justice Department officials available, Cruz convened a contentious panel discussion on his assertion that the administration has failed to confront what some witnesses described as a global Islamist movement bent on imposing Sharia law in the West. Cruz and other conservative critics deride it as political correctness run amok – or worse, a deliberate attempt to minimize the avowedly religious motivations of terrorist attackers like Mateen, whose references to the Islamic State and other terrorist groups initially were redacted from the government's 911 call transcripts. Cruz also cited testimony by Homeland Security whistleblower Philip Haney alleging that he had seen law enforcement and intelligence documents "purged" of references to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist or terrorist organizations.

Center for Security Policy: Senator Cruz Exposes ‘Willful Blindness’ to Jihad
Another day, another act of jihad. Fortunately, even as Islamists were blowing up Turkey’s biggest airport yesterday, the first serious congressional oversight hearing since 9/11 was illuminating why such acts of Islamic holy war have been obscured, denied and arguably enabled by the U.S. government. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Ted Cruz deserves great credit for empaneling a group of Muslim and non-Muslim patriots – and individuals who are associated with or enablers of the Muslim Brotherhood’s stealthy influence operations – to discuss how such subversive forms of jihad have helped take down our first lines of defense against them. 

The Federalist: Senate Hearing: While Feds Scrubbed References to Islam, Terrorists Escaped Notice
In the hearing, Cruz repeatedly brought up Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, who was known to have visited radical Islamic websites and been in email contact with a radical cleric. This is important because Hassan’s terrorist attack was one of the earliest occurrences of the Obama administration’s insistence that there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism, because the White House fundamentally rejects the notion that Islam inspires violence. The military officially labeled the Fort Hood shooting “workplace violence,” despite what Hassan himself claims it was. Another major point raised in Tuesday’s hearing was the scrubbing of terms like “Islam” and “jihad” in DHS training materials over the past several years. This was compared with the 9/11 Commission report, where Islam-related words showed up more than 100 times.

Conservative Review: Cruz Hearing on Islamic Terrorism Exposes ‘Idiots Staring at the Finger’ Instead of the Moon
This analogy offered by Dr. Jasser at the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Islamism yesterday is perhaps the most accurate illustration of the willful blindness of our political leaders in both parties. Throughout the hearing, and indeed throughout the political debates of the past few years, Democrats focused on generic extremism, guns, or poverty following any tragic event. Republicans and Democrats alike want to focus on the Islamic State as the end-all of terrorism, even though it was created in 2013 –decades after the rise of the modern pan-Islamist Jihadist movement. Like idiots, they focus on the pointed finger. What they disregard is the ‘moon’ of Sharia-compliant Islam that is fundamentally at war with the West, seeks to impose Sharia on the world, and infiltrates western civilization in order to cultivate the climate the gives rise to both political Islam, and its tactic, terrorism. 

PJ Media: Willful Blindness and Radical Islam
Government counterterrorism policy has been willfully blind for a quarter-century to the ideological underpinnings of radical Islamic terrorism. The reluctance has been rationalized on the wayward theory that because a person’s religious beliefs and political speech are constitutionally shielded from prosecution, they are similarly shielded from mere inquiry and investigation – notwithstanding that we know they are often precursors to violence. A sensible national security policy cannot regard the objective presentation of evidence as if it were the promotion of hate speech. There is nothing inherently wrong with, much less constitutionally offensive about, the concept that radical religious or political beliefs should trigger investigations. That is especially the case if those beliefs are conveyed by aggressive language, or by association with other radicals or mosques known to endorse jihadism.